My Big Fat Zombie Goldfish (3 page)

“You shocked him back to life,” said Pradeep. “Like Frankenstein in that movie. Hey, let's call him Frankie—after the monster.”

“Hello, Frankie,” I said, tapping the side of the sink. He stopped swimming and slowly turned around. And that's when I swear he looked me right in the eye and winked.

 

 

“Did you see that?” I turned to Pradeep.

“What?” Pradeep was drying his hands on the bathroom towel.

“The way Frankie looked at me? He winked!” I stared down at the goldfish, but now he was looking around in the normal way that goldfish do. You know, where one of their eyes is looking at the wall and the other eye is looking up your left nostril at the same time.

“Never mind,” I said, shaking my head. “We've gotta get Frankie back in his bowl before Mark notices he's gone. Or else—”

“You're dead meat.” Pradeep finished my words.

We ran back into Mark's room to grab the bowl of gloopy green water.

“You can't put him back in the bowl. The gunge will kill him,” Pradeep said.

“We can't put him in clean water. Mark will notice and kill
me
,” I said. “And then he'll kill Frankie!”

We ran back to the bathroom, sat on the radiator and stared at Frankie swimming around in the sink.

Then I had an idea. “Hey, what if we make it green with safe stuff. Remember that green food coloring stuff your mom used last St. Patrick's Day? I mean, if it's OK for people to eat, it's gotta be OK for a fish to swim in, right?”

Pradeep thought for a sec. “It'll have to be.”

Pradeep's mom isn't Irish, she just gets really into holidays. You can pretty much name a holiday and Pradeep's mom has had a party for it. When we went over there for her St. Patrick's Day party, she had dyed everything green. We even had green finger sandwiches.

Which, it turns out, don't even have real fingers in them. Total false advertising.

And she had green milkshakes and green cupcakes with green icing. It was cool except that when you eat seventeen green cupcakes in a row, it means you throw up in green.

“We have to get some of the green food coloring from your kitchen,” I said.

“I can't go home,” Pradeep said. “My mom will make me stay for the Earth Day Polar Bear Pajama Party that she's having.”

I looked at Pradeep with a face that said, I can't even ask why she would do that. He answered my face.

“She says the North Pole has really long nights and the polar bears sleep a lot, so they'd want a pajama party.” He paused. “I told her it didn't work.”

“Never mind. OK, I'll go and get the food coloring.” I said. As I started for the stairs I could hear the
thump, thump, thump
of Mark's music coming through his headphones. He must be on the couch just by the steps. There was no way I could sneak past. “OK, I'm taking Escape Route 5.” Pradeep and I had planned sixteen different escape routes from both our houses, just in case of a Code Red. Route 5 was out of my bathroom window. “Pradeep, it's up to you to stop Mark from coming upstairs before I get back.”

“You can count on me,” Pradeep said. “I'll think of something to keep him occupied.”

He gave me a thumbs-up, then took a deep breath and headed downstairs to the TV room, where Mark was slumped over the couch.

“Can I say, that's a really cool white scientist coat you're wearing,” Pradeep said. I heard him start to tell Mark about the nature special on the National Geographic channel that shows you what's really in a crocodile's stomach.

Time for Escape Route 5. I opened the window of the bathroom and stood on the toilet lid to climb out onto the garage roof. Suddenly it looked a lot farther down to the roof than it did in the drawing we'd done in Pradeep's notebook. No going back now though. I edged out the window. Then I heard a
splash
and a
thwap
. Before I even turned around I knew what that sound was. It was the sound of a wet goldfish hitting a tiled floor.

 

 

“No, Frankie!” I said as I jumped off the toilet and scooped him up.

He wriggled in my hands as I dropped him back into the sink. He swam twice in a circle and then up to the surface, where he stared at me, his eyes glowing a bit green.

“You stay here. I'll be back.” I climbed back onto the toilet seat and turned and pushed the window again, wide enough for me to crawl through. That was when I heard the next
splash
and then a
whoosh
!

Green and gold flashed past my right ear as Frankie leaped out of the window. I stuck my head out in time to see him land in a puddle of rainwater on the garage roof. Jumping down, I quickly dug the plastic bag he'd arrived in out of the trash. This was too weird. Frankie really wanted to go outside. None of the ping-pong-ball fish ever did anything like this.

Once I'd filled up the bag with water I scrambled out onto the roof.